HGC provided Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Alibaba) the “OTT Network Extension” solution to extend its eCommerce business to Asia, the Americas and Europe to capture new customers, in becoming the world’s largest eCommerce company. Additionally, prior to Single’s Day on November 11, HGC also activated Network Control plan to ensure Alibaba’s network remains stable and secure for transaction on 11.11 Single’s Day, contributing to its US$14.3 billion sales (60% higher than in 2014).

Innovative achievements

With HGC’s “OTT Network Extension” solution, four extension sites across Asia, the Americas and Europe were efficiently established within 2015. The solution allows Alibaba to benefit from technical consultancy on network design, equipment procurement, local vendor sourcing as well as handling of regulatory issues delivered by HGC’s professional engineers and solution specialists. The solution facilitated the capture of eyeballs and new customers, enabling Alibaba in becoming the world’s largest eCommerce company.

1. One-stop project management
• HGC provided Alibaba a customised proposal, detailing project specifications and deliverables, along with consultancy services to ensure Alibaba gains a full picture of the project.
• HGC handled all aspects from project planning, implementation to provisioning and maintenance across four sites, with high service availability of 99.9999% and international standard.
• HGC was Alibaba’s single contact point, aligning all local vendors and partners to ensure impeccable service quality and timely project delivery.

2. Local professional across the globe
HGC’s homegrown talents worldwide ensure Alibaba receives timely support in the same language, culture and time zone in a timely manner, eliminating communication difficulties.

3. Total telecoms solutions and beyond
HGC does not only offers telecommunications services but one-stop OTT solutions. Being aware that OTT players rate end-user experience and eyeballs their top priorities, HGC fine-tuned IP transit routings for Alibaba to ensure shortest AS path provision, reducing latency to uplift end- user experience. In view of possible future expansion needs, HGC also strategically arranged Alibaba’s racks in its premium data centre so there are always room for expansion.

4. Professional operation & service management
With an understanding that OTT players could not afford a single network failure, HGC proactively came up with a new set of parameters and measure to monitor network performance. With regular health check, planned maintenance and continuous improvement plans, HGC instils Alibaba total network quality and peace-of-mind.

1. HGC’s engineers worked flexible hours to shorten site establishment timeframe from 3 months to 45 days.
2. Riding on flexible resources allocation, HGC is able to provide Alibaba burstable bandwidth that is rarely provided by other Telecoms providers due to large amount of resource involved.
3. HGC’s flexible commercial arrangement allows Alibaba to pay for its usage on a pay-as-you-go basis, turning capex into opex.
4. Riding on regular maintenance and improvement plans, HGC is able to maintain 99.9999% service availability even in hard-to-entered countries.
5. HGC also activated a Network Control plan during 11.11 Single’s Day to ensure Alibaba’s network remains stable and secure for transaction, contributing to its US$14.3 billion sales (60% higher than in 2014).

Results

The OTT network extension solution efficiently extended Alibaba’s service coverage across Asia, the Americas and Europe to capture new customers.

The provision of a secure and stable network for Alibaba’s eCommerce portals contributed to Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of US$14.3 billion (RMB 91.2 billion) during the Single’s Day global shopping festival, more than Cyber Monday and Black Friday combined.

The burstable bandwidth also supported AliCloud, Alibaba’s cloud-computing subsidiary to process a total of 140,000 transactions per second during its peak and Alipay to process a total of 710 million payment transactions.